Utah's loss is South Dakota's gain.

The Mount Rushmore State's Air National Guard will pick up 18 F-16 fighter jets from Hill Air Force Base as part of a force restructuring plan that reduces the Hill fleet by 24 planes.

The transfers will likely occur in the next six months.

Air Force officials haven't announced where the other six Hill jets will go. "However, we would expect the jets leaving Hill to be relocated across the Air Force during this fiscal year," said Col. David Hathaway, vice commander of Hill's 388th Fighter Wing.

The military announced last June that Hill would be losing the jets, but did not indicate where the assets would go.

"This gives us a tremendous step in defining the future of the fighter aircraft mission," Lt. Col Reid Christopherson, executive officer of South Dakota's 114th Fighter Wing, said in an article in the Sioux Falls Argus Leader .